Budding designers will soon have an easier way to create their own video games using the Xbox 360.

For more than a year, garage programmers have been able to use Microsoft's XNA Game Studio to create video games. But that still requires some knowledge of actual programming. A new Microsoft game creation software program called Kodu, scheduled to be released on Xbox Live later this spring (no price set), will give children - and their parents - the ability to pick up a controller and make a game in minutes.